A conspiracy theory has been making the rounds that 1.2 million Texans registered to vote without a valid ID, which would be a violation of Texas law. Secretary of State Jane Nelson made a statement on Wednesday debunking the claim.
“It is totally inaccurate that 1.2 million voters have registered to vote in Texas without a photo ID this year,” the statement reads. “The truth is our voter rolls have increased by 57,711 voters since the beginning of 2024. This is less than the number of people registered in the same timeframe in 2022 (about 65,000) and in 2020 (about 104,000). When Texans register to vote, they must provide a driver license number or a Social Security number. When an individual registers to vote with just a SSN, the state verifies that the SSN is authentic.”
According to Nelson, the 1.2 million figure comes from the federal Social Security Administration, which measures how many times a state has asked to verify a social security number. Nelson was unclear why the SSA should have such an inflated figure but asserted that it was “clearly incorrect.”
This did not stop the theory from running through social media like wildfire. Tesla owner Elon Musk shared the theory on Twitter on April 2, calling it “extremely concerning.” At least one Republican politician also ran with it. David Lowe, who is in a primary runoff with Stephanie Klick in Texas House District 91, called on Governor Greg Abbott to launch a special session on election security.
Several people have called Nelson a liar, showing screenshots from the TexVote.gov website showing the alternative forms of ID that Texans can use to register to vote. Nelson did not say that Texans need a physical driver’s license or social security card to register, only the number, which is then verified. Physical ID is required at the polls, but if a voter does not have one, they can use another form of identification to file a provisional ballot and fill out a reasonable impediment declaration.
Unsurprisingly, some people claimed that undocumented immigrants can receive social security numbers in order to work in the United States. This fits into the unsupported assertion that the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen by illegal voters.
Only immigrants who enter the country legally are eligible for social security numbers. A person who crossed the border illegally seeking asylum, who was then granted asylum, then applied for work authorization, could conceivably receive a social security number to report wages to the government. However, they would still be ineligible to vote until they became a naturalized citizen.
Non-citizens cannot vote in U.S. elections, and there has never been a shred of evidence that they even attempt to do so outside a handful of isolated cases.
Even aside from the Secretary of State’s official statement, the idea that 1.2 million new people have registered to vote in Texas in 2024 is ludicrous. The state population in 2022 was 30.03 million, with 17.11 million of them registered to vote. If you subtract the 7.46 million Texans who are under 18 and not allowed to vote, that means there are only 5.46 million unregistered voters to even expand the rolls from.
That a full 20 percent of the reported population of unregistered voters did so within three months would be the single largest voter registration movement since the passage of the 19th Amendment. The idea that such a massive registration of people could be coordinated but done so covertly that no one was aware of it is beyond belief.
